未来数十年全球秩序的关键问题是：中国和美国能够避开“修昔底德陷阱”(Thucydides’s trap)吗？这位历史学家的隐喻提醒我们，当一个崛起的大国与既有的统治霸主竞争时，双方面临何等危险——正如公元前5世纪希腊人和19世纪末德国人面临的情况一样。这种挑战多数以战争告终。维系和平要求双方政府和社会大力调整各自的态度和行动。
公元前5世纪，雅典成为文明中心。哲学、历史、戏剧、建筑、民主等各方面的成就之高前所未有。雅典的急剧崛起震惊了伯罗奔尼撒半岛既有的陆地霸主斯巴达。恐惧迫使斯巴达的领导人采取回应举动。双方之间的威胁和反威胁引发竞争，接着升级为对抗，最终爆发冲突。长达30年的战争结束后，两国均遭毁灭。
修昔底德这样评论这些事件：“正是雅典的崛起和由此引发的斯巴达的恐惧导致战争不可避免。”注意这里的两个关键变数：崛起和恐惧。
任何一个新兴大国的迅速崛起都会打破现状。哈佛大学美国国家利益委员会(Harvard
University’s Commission on American National Interests)观察中国后得出结论：在21世纪，“这样的一个大国走上世界舞台必然产生影响”。
从来没有哪个国家方方面面的国际排名像中国一样攀升得如此之高，如此之快。仅仅一代人的时间，这个国内生产总值(GDP)曾经不及西班牙的国家成了世界第二大经济体。
如果我们按照历史经验来判断，修昔底德陷阱这个问题的答案是显而易见的。自1500年以来，大国崛起挑战统治霸主的15起案例中，11起爆发了战争。想想统一后的德国吧，它取代了英国成为欧洲最大的经济体。在1914年和1939年，德国的侵略和英国的回应引发了两次世界大战。
中国的崛起令美国不舒服，但一个日益强大的中国要求更多话语权、要求在国际关系中拥有更大的影响力，这样的要求很正常。美国人——尤其是那些教导中国人“更像我们”的美国人，应该反思我们自己的历史。
1890年左右，随着美国崛起为西半球的主宰力量，它做出了什么行为？未来的总统西奥多•罗斯福(Theodore Roosevelt)代表美国，高度自信地表示，未来100年是美国的世纪。在一战之前，美国解放了古巴；以战争威胁英国和德国，迫使它们接受美国在委内瑞拉和加拿大争端中的立场；支持哥伦比亚叛乱，使其分裂，建立了新的国家巴拿马，巴拿马则立刻授予美国建造巴拿马运河(Panama Canal)的特许权；试图推翻英国政府支持、由伦敦银行家提供资金的墨西哥政府。在随后的半个世纪，美国军事力量在“我们的半球”出手展开了30余次不同的干预，谋求以有利于美国的方式解决经济或领土争端，或者驱逐我们认为不可接受的领导者。
承认强大的结构性因素并不是主张领导者是历史铁律的囚徒。相反，这能帮助我们领会挑战之艰巨。如果中美领导人的表现无法超越他们的古希腊、或者20世纪初欧洲的前辈，21世纪的历史学家将援引修昔底德的观点解释随之而来的灾难。战争对于两个国家均具有毁灭性，这一事实很重要，但不是决定性的。回想一下一战，所有参战者都失去了最宝贵的东西。
鉴于发生这种后果的风险，中美两国领导人务必开始就潜在的对抗和爆发点展开坦诚磋商。而更为困难和痛苦的是，双方必须开始做出实质性调整，包容对方无法退让的要求。
本文作者是哈佛大学(Harvard University)贝尔弗尔科学与国际事务研究中心(Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs)主任
译者/倪卫国
Thucydides’s trap has been sprung in the Pacific
China’s increasingly aggressive posturetowards
the South China Seaandthe Senkaku Islandsin the East China Sea is less
important in itself than as a sign of things to come. For six decades after the
second world war, an American “Pax Pacifica” has provided the security and
economic framework within which Asian countries have produced the most rapid
economic growth in history. However, having emerged as a great power that will
overtake the US in the next decade to become the largest economy in the world,
it is not surprising that China will demand revisions to the rules established
by others.
The defining question about global order in
the decades ahead will be: can China and the US escape Thucydides’s trap? The
historian’s metaphor reminds us of the dangers two parties face when a rising
power rivals a ruling power – as Athens did in 5th century BC and Germany did
at the end of the 19th century. Most such challenges have ended in war.
Peaceful cases required huge adjustments in the attitudes and actions of the
governments and the societies of both countries involved.
Classical Athens was the centre of
civilisation. Philosophy, history, drama, architecture, democracy – all beyond
anything previously imagined. This dramatic rise shocked Sparta, the
established land power on the Peloponnese. Fear compelled its leaders to respond.
Threat and counter-threat produced competition, then confrontation and finally
conflict. At the end of 30 years of war, both states had been destroyed.
Thucydides wrote of these events: “It was
the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war
inevitable.” Note the two crucial variables: rise and fear.
The rapid emergence of any new power
disturbs the status quo. In the 21st century, as Harvard University’sCommission
on American National Interestshas observed about China, “a diva of such
proportions cannot enter the stage without effect”.
Never has a nation moved so far, so fast,
up the international rankings on all dimensions of power. In a generation, a
state whose gross domestic product was smaller than Spain’s has become the
second-largest economy in the world.
If we were betting on the basis of history,
the answer to the question about Thucydides’s trap appears obvious. In 11 of 15
cases since 1500 where a rising power emerged to challenge a ruling power, war
occurred. Think about Germany after unification as it overtook Britain as
Europe’s largest economy. In 1914 and in 1939, its aggression and the UK’s
response produced world wars.
Uncomfortable as China’s rise is for the
US, there is nothing unnatural about an increasingly powerful China demanding
more say and greater sway in relations among nations. Americans, particularly
those who lecture Chinese about being “more like us”, should reflect on our own
history.
As the US emerged as the dominant power in
the western hemisphere in about 1890, how did it behave? Future president
Theodore Roosevelt personified a nation supremely confident that the next 100
years would be an American century. In the years before the first world war the
US liberated Cuba, threatened Britain and Germany with war to force them to
accept US positions on disputes in Venezuela and Canada, backed an insurrection
that split Columbia to create a new state of Panama – which immediately gave
the US concessions to build the Panama Canal – and attempted to overthrow the
government of Mexico, which was supported by the UK and financed by London
bankers. In the half century that followed, US military forces intervened in
“our hemisphere” on more than 30 separate occasions to settle economic or
territorial disputes on terms favourable to Americans, or oust leaders we
judged unacceptable.
To recognise powerful structural factors is
not to argue that leaders are prisoners of the iron laws of history. It is
rather to help us appreciate the magnitude of the challenge. If leaders in
China and the US perform no better than their predecessors in classical Greece,
or Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, historians of the 21st century
will cite Thucydides in explaining the catastrophe that follows. The fact that
war would be devastating for both nations is relevant but not decisive. Recall
the first world war, in which all the combatants lost what they treasured most.
In light of the risks of such an outcome,
leaders in both China and the US must begin talking to each other much more
candidly about likely confrontations and flash points. Even more difficult and
painful, both must begin making substantial adjustments to accommodate the
irreducible requirements of the other.
The writer is Director of the Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University
